HTTP 414: Way Too F#%&ing Long

Most of us web developers will never encounter an HTTP 414 Error. According to the W3C, 414 means:

Request-URI Too Long - The server is refusing to service the request because the Request-URI is longer than the server is willing to interpret. This rare condition is only likely to occur when a client has improperly converted a POST request to a GET request with long query information, when the client has descended into a URI "black hole" of redirection (e.g., a redirected URI prefix that points to a suffix of itself), or when the server is under attack by a client attempting to exploit security holes present in some servers using fixed-length buffers for reading or manipulating the Request-URI.

While no one is exactly clear on exactly how long "too long" is, I'm sure that most of us would agree that 255 characters are enough, 2000 characters are really pushing it, and 4000 characters are, without a doubt, Way Too F#%&ing Long.

Of course, not everyone agrees with that assessment. Take A.C.'s predecessor, for example, who devised this devilishly clever method of dynamically generating report definitions, all without the need for a pesky HTTP POST...

Yes it is. It's one logical line, printed on several physical lines due to inadequacies of the output format. If there was a newline character anywhere in it, it'd be malformed HTTP (as opposed to just bad HTTP).